Monday, April 14, 2008

First of all, this blog is coming atcha from a classroom. Could I be more of a senior?

As the season arrives at a point, Mae and I have been talking lately about the mysteries of Lost. What with the strike and everything—plus the whole starting in January thing—this season of Lost hasn’t really followed a traditional sweeps pattern. We’ve gotten a lot of answers, a lot more questions, and we’re reaching a point where both of us JUST WANT ANSWERS.

Last night on the phone, Mae said to me, “I don’t want to live in a world without Lost, but sometimes I just want it to be over.”

It was so true.

So as we get to the exciting part of the season, we wanted to put some questions out there—questions to which we want answers. These are particularly related to season four, part of a longer list of questions we have for JJ and crew. We want to see these questions answered in 2008.

1. How is Aaron with Kate? We have information about what looks like a Claire-centric episode. The producers also said that of the last three episodes, only one is a flashback, and that should be the Locke-centric episode directly preceding this Claire outing. So Claire’s episode should then be a flashforward, which is fine and super-intriguing, especially because it includes Australians. Which leads me to two incredibly important points: if Claire in the future is in Australia, then why is she not (A) with Aaron and (B) the Oceanic seventh?

Are we going to eventually see a Claire/Aaron reunion? ‘Cause, folks, that’d be hella awkward. It’d be a little Walt/Michael circa season one, except that Kate (AKA Mom) will likely be around...very high awkward potential.

There’s a spoiler out there that says in a future episode, we see Sawyer, Claire, and Aaron making their way back to the beach. Could they be defectors from Team Locke? The spoiler also said that something goes wrong on the trek. Maybe this is how Claire and Aaron get separated. And how Sawyer dies.

2. Why is it so hard to find the island? Desmond and Sayid are out of the island’s logistical perimeter, aren’t they? We’ve been told that the freighters aren’t the rescuers, so our brains are jumping to one Penelope Widmore. She’s out for Desmond, so I’d chance to believe that she’ll find the freighter first—and would have to be led to the island to save the others. She knows Desmond’s on a boat—she’s looking for a boat. So I want these guys to spell out the how and why of getting to the island. I think we will, because of this quote from Damon Lindelof: "This year's finale will sum up exactly how difficult it may be to [journey back to the island]." And what is the barrier? Is there, like, a manmade barrier between the island and the real world, constructed by the Others or the Hostiles or DHARMA or whatever? And the barrier turns off sometimes, like on September 22, 2004 and the day the hatch imploded?

3. Who’s in the coffin? I mean, I can sit here and throw out about a million ideas: Claire, Ben, Sayid, Michael, Christian, Walt, Sawyer. But does that get us anywhere? Doubtful, because I don’t have a good theory as to who’s actually in there. The bigger question, I guess, is why Kate reacted so viscerally to the funeral in “Through the Looking Glass.” It seems to me like someone she and Jack mutually didn’t like—apparently, no one really liked him or her, as the funeral was empty—but her face seemed to show such a strong distaste.

4. Where do Juliet’s loyalties lie? We think she pretty much works for herself. She wants off the island, and the Losties seem like her best chance of making it back to Miami. (We like this theory because it might mean she sees Jack as just a convenience, not a love interest.) Since Juliet is one of our favorite love-to-hate characters on television right now, we’re hoping she goes down in a blaze of shame or glory. As we’ve said before, we want to see Juliet either turn out to be a traitorous whore (the Lauren Reed path) or sacrifice herself for the good of the larger community (the Diana Fowley path). Ultimately, we could see this happening this season if, perhaps, Juliet sacrifices her own chances of escaping the island in favor of Sun, her patient, getting off the island. (Although, we’d have to ask—wouldn’t Jack do the same thing?)

5. Is Christian Shephard alive? When Jack kept going on and on about finding his dad at St. Sebastian’s in “Through the Looking Glass,” Mae and I immediately wrote it off as the musings of a severely drugged and depressed guy. Mae’s mom, however, demanded that Christian Shephard is actually alive. Could it be that, just as the island cured Jin’s infertility, Rose’s cancer, and Locke’s paralysis, it “cured” Christian Shephard’s death? Seems unlikely, sure, because we’re existing under the assumption that were Locke to return to the real world, he’d have to break out the wheelchair, so if we follow this model, wouldn’t Christian return to death in the real world even if he is alive on the island? I could see the elder Dr. Shephard as having something to do with the “Frozen Donkey Wheel,” for sure, as he’s related not only to our much-beloved hero, but also to Claire, Aaron, and to Jacob.

6. What in the hell is Jacob? Yeah, speaking of that guy, WTF? I don’t even have a theory on Jacob. A lot of the mysteries of Lost have thus far been explained by logic and science (electromagnetic forces, e.g.), but Jacob and his cabin are just a complete mindf*ck to me. Ben, Hurley, and Locke can see it—are they the only ones? The third episode back is called “Cabin Fever,” so I’d venture to say we might be getting some answers about (or at least a better look at) the mysteries in that little shanty. I want to know just how much Jacob “controls”—is it just that he influences Ben, or is there more to it? Is Jacob associated with the whispers? With the castaways’ visions of Walt or Ana-Lucia or Libby or Christian Shephard? With the monster?

7. Time travel—WTF? Again, I wish I had something to say about time travel, but I don’t. Just give me answers, people. I have a feeling that no matter what they say, to understand this time travel business I’d need Damon Lindelof to sit me down and personally explain it to me, using flowcharts and visual aids and probably some mathematic equations. Literally, just have Daniel Faraday sit on a bench, look into the camera, and explain it to me.

8. Why doesn’t Richard Alpert age? I’ll take some more information about the Hostiles, please. As I understand it, Ben allied with the Hostiles to organize and execute the Purge of the DHARMA Initiative to become what we now know as the Others. It begs the question...are there more Hostiles out there that didn’t join Team Ben and Richard? Maybe those people have become so evolved with the island that they’ve become like the monster in the episode of The X-Files where Mulder and Scully get lost in the woods (“Detour”). Maybe they’re the whispers! Either way, I want to know what the deal is with Richard Alpert and his inability to get old. Does the island cure aging, too?

9. What happened to Annie? This is Mae’s favorite question; I’m a little eh on it. But Annie, the little DHARMA girl who was Ben’s childhood sweetheart, seems to have had a huge effect on the boy who’d grow up to be Chief Other. Did she die in the Purge? Could she have died in childbirth with Ben’s baby? (And he was so distraught he decided to steal himself one?) I’d be willing to bet that when Harper (therapist to the Others) told Juliet, “You look just like her,” she was referring to Annie.

10. When are Jack and Claire going to find out they’re related? Both Jack and Claire have upcoming centric episodes, so I’m hopeful that we’re going to get this moment pretty soon. How might this affect Aaron’s future? A while ago, I specced that perhaps Claire knowingly puts Aaron on the rescue boat with his uncle, not just with Jack. Also, if Jack knows just how he is connected to Claire, it could fuel his post-island guilt—although I don’t understand why my Jack Shephard wouldn’t work through his shit to honor his responsibility to his sister’s baby and his father’s grandson.

Is that too much to ask? I mean, there are some pretty big reveals involved in answering these questions, but I think I’m being more than reasonable. I can hold off on learning more about the monster, the four-toed statue, and what happens to Sawyer until next season. These ten questions can be answered to some degree in these last five episodes, especially now that you’ve gotten your extra hour.

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